Ageing picturehouses such as the Rex are rented out by evangelical “sister churches”.
Photograph: Alamy

It’s Sunday afternoon on Rue Dussac, a dusty cobbled street in downtown Antananarivo, and a relaxed crowd of young, elegantly dressed Malagasy women has gathered in the shade outside the Rex cinema. Among them is Kantou, 20, who has come with her mother to see today’s “show”: a service of the Evangelical Messenger of Awakening (MRE) church.

“I first started coming when I was 14. I was going through some serious emotional problems back then,” says Kantou. Her mother had stopped believing in God after her divorce. They heard about the MRE church through a friend and have been coming every Sunday since.

Inside, the giant dusty screen and rows of folding seats are remnants of a bygone era of cinema-going. On a raised stage, a woman in her 40s energetically leads a band equipped with electric guitars and what looks like pricey sound equipment. She implores the arriving attendees to sing.

The Rex was one of many classically named cinemas built in the 1920s and 30s, when Madagascar was a French colony. Cinema-going peaked in the 1960s and 70s, and now the ageing picturehouses are rented out year-round to the booming “sister churches”, evangelical sects whose desire to entertain has earned them a keen following, particularly among the young.

Madagascar is the only country in the world whose population has been getting poorer for the past 60 years despite not being at war. Photograph: Yann Guichaoua-Photos/Getty Images

Modelled after the success of Nigeria’s superstar preachers, churches such as MRE and Shine were launched in the early 2000s. Self-proclaimed prophets such as Jocelyn Ranjarison and Patrick Andrianarivo have created lucrative personal brands, asking their devotees for hefty financial contributions in exchange for the promise of great miracles.

Madagascar is the only country in the world whose population has been getting poorer for the past 60 years despite not being at war. So it’s not hard to understand why Malagasies might be swayed by churches that promise better lives on top of entertaining afternoons.

Added to that is the decline of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), one of the largest Protestant churches in the country with five million followers, and whose leaders have close ties to powerful politicians on the island. Decades of corruption scandals have tested the faith of its followers.

“In these new churches, you won’t hear a sermon in favour of this or that political leader,” says Lova Rabary, historian and former editor-in-chief of the local daily newspaper L’Express. “They promise things – healing, personal gain – in a language that is more accessible and less austere than traditional churches.”

Madagascar’s major Protestant church suffered a decline in popularity after a series of scandals. Photograph: Artush/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Nancy is also attending the service at the Rex with her mother, and is in her early 20s. Before she discovered the MRE, Nancy attended FJKM services. “I like it here, it’s more open to young people, more fun,” she says, amid the swaying and singing.

Across the street from the Rex, in the old Ritz cinema the Shine church promises “to release people from the oppression of ignorance and to raise them into a glorious life”. Inside, the room is packed with well-dressed couples who wave to the pastor on their way in.

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Roland Ramaro is a middle-aged man with a warm smile and a slightly frenzied look. “The special miracle session is about to start,” he announces. “Before Shine, I was neither Protestant nor Muslim. I was hard-headed. Today, I wake up every day at 4am and pray for two hours.” Ramaro is a good illustration of another reason why churchgoers don’t mind the heavy focus on collecting money. He had been working in Antananarivo as a tuk-tuk driver but after crossing paths with a Shine bishop, the church helped secure him a full-time office job with a carrier company.

“Church has always been a major driver of social climbing, and that’s what many of the attendees are looking for,” says Rabary.

For some, though, the new use for these old palaces of film is a depressing reminder of the decline of cinema in Madagascar.

Cinema was once seen as a useful educational tool, but evangelism is now the entertainment on offer. Photograph: Isabelle Mayault

“I pass through this street every day and of course, it’s frustrating to see this,” says Laza, a Malagasy film-maker and founder of the Madagascar short film festival, whose father was once the projectionist at the Ritz.

During Madagascar’s golden age for cinema-going, in the 1960s and 70s, screenings of films starring Bruce Lee and Jean-Paul Belmondo would run daily from Tuesday to Sunday in more than 100 locations on the island. Cinema was seen as a useful tool for educating the largely rural population. But in the late 1990s, president Didier Ratsiraka decided to cut all government funding for the industry, eventually leading to the closure of the Rue Dussac cinemas.

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“Four years ago, we managed to rent one of the downtown cinemas for the Human Rights film festival,” recalls Laza. “I decided to screen a feature from the Democratic Republic of Congo about evangelical sects – Traders of Miracles (Marchands de miracles) by Gilles Remiche. The usual followers attended but their only question was: why weren’t we making a movie about them?”

For his part, Ramaro shares some reservations about holding services in former cinema buildings. “We had to divert evil spirits away from the room with holy water,” he explains.

Isabelle Mayault’s reporting in Madagascar was supported by the International Reporting Project.